Telephony service over the Internet remains still remains in its infancy for a variety of reasons. One major impediment remains the problem of completing calls in an efficient and economical manner between calling and called parties, one or both of whom may be subscribers of Internet Telephony (IT) services. For example, the calling party will not know if the called party is on line. Indeed, the calling party may need to initially call the called party using the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), such as PSTN maintained by AT&T, to request the called party go on line to complete an Internet Call. Most importantly, there is presently no way to automatically interlink between the PSTN and the Internet in an efficient manner. Instead, the caller must resort to trial and error. Also, there is presently no way to complete calls from a subscriber of Plain Ordinary Telephone Service (POTS) to an IT subscriber who is on-line.
Presently, a caller seeking to make a call over the Internet to a called party must also know the specific Internet Protocol (IP) address of the called party. Only by entering the particular IP address of the called party can the calling party launch an Internet telephone call. Not every calling party will remember the IP address for a particular called party. While there are services/servers that can do such mapping using an arbitrary text string, such as the caller's name, both the calling and called parties must subscribe to such service/servers and must utilize special software on their computers. Once the subscriber logs on, the software communicates the corresponding IP address to the server. In contrast, the calling party typically knows, or can easily retrieve the conventional seven or ten-digit Plain Old Telephony Service (POTS) number of the called party. However, to date, the called party's POTS number has played no role in IT.
Thus, there is a need for a technique for completing calls over the Internet in an economical, efficient manner, while taking advantage of the called party's conventional POTS telephone number.